Conversation with Phillip Dane Voss August 1, 2017 Jacksonville, Florida Recorded and Transcribed by Lyn Corley 2 TAPE 1 SIDE A LYN-Today is August 4, 2017 and I am on the Ortega River off Ortega Farms Circle and we are talking to Phil Voss who did serve at Cecil Field and has served this city since his time at Cecil. I know he has a very interesting story. We are going to begin saying when were you born and where you born? Tell us about your family. PHIL-I was born right after World War II in 1947 and I was born in Natchez, Mississippi of a Danish father who was a Danish Merchant Marine and that’s how he made it to the United States. He was working on the Mississippi River on river boats and tug boats and ended up landing in Natchez, Mississippi. A lot of emigrants did settle there and he met this little girl who was at a gas station he was working at. That ended up being my mother. LYN-Tell us her name. PHIL-Her name was Delphine, on the German side of things. Lots of Germans in Natchez, Mississippi. You’ll get a kick out of this because there are so many emigrants there, there were three Catholic churches, one being the cathedral for the state of Mississippi, two Jewish synagogues, lots of Methodists, lots of Presbyterians, and only one Southern Baptist Church. [Phil and I had talked beforehand about my husband being a Southern Baptist pastor] LYN-Well that is interesting in Mississippi. (Laugh) PHIL-It really is in Mississippi but it’s mainly emigrants. The thing is that my dad was there and he started working for an uncle of his which grew into a, he ended up buying it and it became an automobile dealership. It became the first Studebaker dealership and the first Mercedes Benz because they are the only ones, Studebaker Corporation was the only one that had permits to sell Mercedes in the United States. He was very big into being a patriot in the United States. His younger brother who he ended up bringing over from Denmark because Denmark, he knew it was going to be invaded. He came over and ended up in the Army and was an Army veteran during the second world war. One of the things my dad wanted for his seven children with my mother, five boys and two girls, all five of us in my case was picked up from high school football practice when I was a senior. I said, “Dad, we gonna go have a beer, it’s my birthday?” He said, “No, remember this is the day that you join the navy.” All five of us, he felt it was very important that we all served our country, which we did. All five of us joined the Navy. Two of us became, we were all enlisted to start with, two of us became officers, two of us became as a matter of fact aviators. So that’s sort of my beginning way back then. I ended up going to the University of Southern Mississippi and I was in the naval reserve at the time. I had applied for officer candidate school and they said, “Well, we really don’t need any” because it was the height of Vietnam years. The draft was on but see I was already in the navy so I couldn’t be drafted. But the thing is that they told me when, I ran into a recruiter when I was at college in the student union and went over and talked to him. He said, “The reason they are saying they don’t need any officer candidates is because all those are the surface warfare guys that went aboard ships and submarines but we 3 don’t really need many of them because the guys from Harvard and Yale and Princeton were filling up those billets but we do need aviators.” I said, “Well, what can I do?” He said, “You can apply to go to aviation officer candidate school in Pensacola and then go through flight training if you make it. We could see where it would go.” I was very interested and I did ask him, “Why do they need more naval aviators?” He said, “Well truthfully they are shooting down two Naval aviators a day in Vietnam right now so we need more aviators.” Well, I passed the test, I got accepted and went to officer candidate school where I’m sure the other people you’ve talked to so far went to officer’s candidate school in Pensacola. LYN-Yes, and my husband was in Pensacola in VT-6. PHIL-I remember VT-6 is still in existence now as a matter of fact. So, I went to officer candidate school there and I got selected back then during the Vietnam years they, you either selected jets, props, or helicopters. Everybody applies for jets of course. Back then out of my class of sixty-two that were commissioned on the same day, four of them got orders for jets. The bulk of the guys got helicopters because we needed a lot of helicopter pilots at that time. LYN-That was to support ground troops. PHIL-Helicopters were primarily, the ones going to Vietnam were, it was called HAL-3 which was helicopter attack squadron flight. They would follow the river marine patrol when they were going up in the river boats and they would fly overhead of them and provided air combat assist for that. So, I knew a lot of guys that were helicopter pilots and I’ll tell you later what happened to them. LYN-What was considered the most dangerous of those three do you think? PHIL-Jets. Jets were going to go straight to Vietnam and in combat. After that you know aviation is dangerous no matter what you do and so it’s really dangerous for all of them. LYN-When you entered the field you knew you were entering a dangerous field. PHIL-I didn’t do jets at that time. I was one of the ones who entered props so I ended up going through the prop pipe line down in Corpus Christi, Texas, got my wings there and then had orders to Quonset Point, Rhode Island to be in my first squadron which was VS-31 Topcats. What that squadron did is that it was anti-submarine warfare so we would go off and while the guys going to Vietnam went one direction west and we went east on the carriers out of Newport, Rhode, Island because of the Cold War. So, we would most of the time I was in the North Atlantic. Most of the time we were above the Arctic Circle and we were flying eight-hour missions at that time off the USS Intrepid which is now a museum. 4 USS INTREPID CVS-11 I need to add, every ship that I served on during my thirty-one years in the Navy and every station that I served at during the time in the Navy and every airplane that I flew is now, they are all in museums or disestablished or gone. The thing is that in my class there were twelve of us aviators that stuck together. Several of them, we all went to Quonset Point, Rhode Island which is where the propeller squadrons were. I made three extended deployments to the Mediterranean and to Europe. LYN-All on the Intrepid. PHIL-All on the Intrepid. I came back and I remember coming back on that last cruise in the spring of 1973 when I had one of the other commanding officers, not of the squadron that I was in but another, he was just being promoted to being a squadron CO to be their training squadron CO which we call the RAG which is a reserve or replacement air group. He says, “I want you to come to that squadron.” I said, “Sir, the only way that I would ever come to that squadron, I’m not going to stay in Rhode Island, I’m a bachelor. If you pick up your squadron and they end up moving it to Florida I’ll come to your squadron.” That’s exactly what happened. 5 VS-31 TOPCATS relocated from Quonset Point, Rhode Island to Cecil Field, Florida They closed the base. We got word of that on the way back from that cruise, the third cruise, and he called me back over and said, “I would like for you to come to us.” He said, “Right now we’re transitioning because they are closing the base. Your squadron needs you and you are a bachelor to help fly the airplanes down and back and down and then back to Cecil Field.” That’s where they were going to move them. LYN-Had you heard of Cecil Field before? PHIL-Never. The thing is that I knew about NAS Jacksonville and I knew about Cecil because I flew over a military base way back in flight training. One of the things you have to do is to go on a cross-country, a long cross-country with an instructor. It’s an instrument check flight. So, as we would come into Jacksonville I remember looking down and seeing this base out in the middle of nowhere and then as we approached NAS Jacksonville and we stayed there overnight, I said, “Man, I love this place with all the water and everything because I grew up on the Mississippi River.” So, here I am now back in Rhode Island and I’m flying the airplanes down here and every time I came down I looked out and I said, “With all that water there’s gotta be a place for me somewhere.” That’s why I’m on the Ortega River.